1. Technical Field
This disclosure generally relates to manufacturing systems, and more specifically relates to authorization of workers to perform operations in manufacturing systems.
2. Background Art
Many modern manufacturing environments require operators (or workers) to be certified to perform certain operations. This leads to a need to track the training for operators, manage the authorization of the operators, and track the certification of the operators. The tracking of operators and their training, certification and authorization is complicated by the use of temporary operators. Many manufacturing environments have a high percentage of temporary operators that may be laid off during periods of low activity and rehired when activity increases. Known systems have no way to account for an operator's past experience when the operator is rehired. When an operator is rehired, the company typically assigns a new user ID to the operator, which means the operator's past experience is not associated with the new user ID. The result is a significant amount of lost information, workmanship defects, negative cycle time impacts, and serious training deficiencies. Without a way to track a operator's authorization across multiple periods of activity and adjust the operator's authorization autonomically, the known ways of managing operators in a manufacturing environment will suffer from the drawbacks mentioned above.